The Executive Doctorate in Business Administration Council (EDBAC) has long been connected to the Weatherhead School of Management.
The EDBAC was co-founded by Kalle Lyytinen, faculty director of Weatherhead’s Doctor of Business Administration (DBA) program, along with Lars Mathiassen, who was the DBA program director at Georgia State University at the time, to create a community with networking and educational opportunities for those in executive doctoral degree programs. Among them are directors, academic directors, faculty, administrators, students and alumni of DBA and PhD programs. Their official research journal, Engaged Management ReView, is also housed at Weatherhead.
And, over the summer, Weatherhead Professor Philip A. Cola was elected president of the EDBAC after serving as a board member for five years.
“EDBAC is a really big part of the legacy of what the Weatherhead School of Management does in the space that exists in the middle of academia and practice,” said Cola, who will serve as president for one year.
Over the years, the EDBAC has grown in size of members from across the world and has formalized and diversified specific roles of its members.
Goals as president
As president, Cola’s goals are to increase engagement of current members; re-engage members that were lost during the COVID-19 pandemic; grow the organizational membership; and ultimately build up the community.
“The EDBAC is a place where a lot of people, whether they land in practice or in academia, can come and share their research, talk to other like-minded people and get ideas of where their work belongs,” Cola said.
Some of these places include having their research published in academic journals or presented at conferences with the goal to help managers make decisions and solve real-world problems.
“I want this to be that space where people can find a home: students, future students, alumni, industry people and academics,” he said. “And then when we're all together we can collaborate to produce more evidence that makes a difference in the world.”
Strengthening innovation in the DBA program
Since 1995, Weatherhead has been at the forefront of executive doctoral programs with the creation of the nation's first doctoral program for practicing executives—the Doctor of Management (DM) program—now offered as the DBA.
The program has been innovative, offering resources that other schools’ DBA programs are trying to learn from, Cola said.
One being the Engaged Practitioner Scholars Program. This is offered to those who graduate from Case Western Reserve University with a DM, DBA or PhD and is a way to stay connected to the resources offered in the program.
Another example is the publication of Voices of Practitioner Scholars in Management in 2020, which narrates the history and impact of the DBA program through the voices of students, alumni and faculty.
“[Voices of Practitioner Scholars in Management] was an innovative idea that I don't think anybody else has done,” Cola said. “We had about 30 people write their post-DBA stories and what they did with their DBA.”
Cola’s election to president of the EDBAC, while continuing to be a professor in the DBA program at Weatherhead, will only help to continue momentum of the program at the school.
“It keeps us in the forefront of the DBA educational world,” Cola said. “And it keeps us in a position as a leader in DBA education.”